Spying on media exposes French government's dark side

"The freedom of the press and the lie of the state." The headline Thursday
in the influential newspaper Le Monde
was bound to make a big splash. While President Nicolas Sarkozy was basking in
the glory of his Libyan intervention and celebrating the virtues of democracy,
the French "paper of record" was denouncing the dark side and the dirty tricks
of his government.

In September 2010, the
paper had filed a lawsuit against Sarkozy's office when it became convinced
that the secret services had
illegally intercepted the phone records of one of its reporters, Gérard
Davet. Following the money trail of the past presidential election and drawing
from confidential sources, the seasoned investigative journalist had exposed
dubious connections between Liliane Bettencourt, the richest woman in France, and
Eric Woerth, the former labor minister and treasurer of Sarkozy's party, Union
pour un movement populaire.

This interception,
according to Le Monde, was used to
identify the source inside the Justice Ministry who had leaked this
incriminating information, a reckless violation of the law on the secrecy of
sources that had been solemnly adopted in January 2010 by the National
Assembly.

At the time French
authorities denied any involvement in spying. The former minister of the interior,
Brice Hortefeux, joked that the Direction centrale du renseignement intérieur, an
agency equivalent to the FBI. "was not the Stasi," referring to the dreaded
secret police of the former German Democratic Republic. Claude Guéant, a close
Sarkozy associate and current minister of the interior, even sued the
independent website Mediapart after
it accused him of ordering the interception of the Le Monde journalist's phone records. "The complaint was discreetly
dropped on June 30, 2011," quipped Le
Monde on Thursday.

Now the whole edifice of
"state lies" is crumbling like a house of cards. The documents in the hands of
the independent investigating judge handling Le Monde's case confirm that intelligence agents were directed to
obtain Gérard Davet's phone records from France Telecom. Interior Minister Claude
Guéant admits now that these interceptions did take place although, he insists,
they were limited to the communications records and not to their contents.
"Quite different from eavesdropping," he said.

After Woerth's resignation
in July 2010, the French government had thought that the Bettencourt story
would fade away. But independent journalists and magistrates doggedly pursued
the story as a matter of principle, convinced that these incidents compromised
not only the freedom of the press but also the integrity of the state.

"The police have used
illegal methods, put themselves at the service of private interests, and been
led to act against democracy," wrote Pascal Riché in Rue89 on Friday.

Highlighting that the Direction
centrale du renseignement intérieur is headed by Bernard Squarcini, a close
ally of Sarkozy, Le Monde's
editorialist pointed last week to the existence of a "black cabinet" at the top
of the state that has "used public resources for private ends and to protect
the president's party, not hesitating to divert the action of the police from
their real mission which is the protection of the citizenry."

Indeed, according to
French law, the use of phone interceptions is strictly limited to affairs that
threaten the security of the country or the safety of its citizens. They are
not supposed to help the government hide its dirty deals or protect its members
from embarrassing revelations.

"Is there something rotten
in the French Kingdom?" This unpleasant question is floating over the whole
"affaire" as if France were under the influence of a "deep state" escaping
democratic scrutiny and public accountability.

Exasperated supporters of
the government turn down these allegations and accuse their political opponents
of going overboard in their eagerness to score cheap political points.

But other investigative
journalists and potential witnesses have also been under fire. Last week, a
journalist with Mediapart, Fabrice
Arfi, said he had received phone threats after writing articles on Ziad
Takieddine, a businessman and arms dealer close to Sarkozy's party and
allegedly involved in controversial deals in Pakistan and Libya.

Mediapart traced the threats to Pierre Sellier, the director of
Salamandre, a private intelligence company. The taped conversation with the
director is blunt: "Mediapart is not
a paper, it is a rag," he said. Edwy Plenel (the Mediapart director)? I will shave his moustache. But Arfi, I am
going to massacre him. You get it? I'm going to kill him. Three bullets in his
head!"

Coming less than a year
before the presidential elections these controversies are rocking the center-right
government. They undermine Sarkozy's efforts to project himself as a serene
presidential figure towering above his bickering Socialist opponents who are
still embroiled in the aftermath of "l'affaire DSK."

On a more positive note,
these rows also prove that a "band of brothers" in the French media are
determined to do their job without fear no favor, following the satirical
weekly Le Canard Enchaîné's motto: "Freedom
of the press only wears out when you do not use it".

CPJ EU Correspondent Jean-Paul Marthoz is a Belgian journalist and longtime press freedom and human rights activist. He teaches international journalism at the Université catholique de Louvain and is a columnist for the Belgian daily Le Soir.

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